by Cherry Adair
Well, that explained the chaps.
“Get on,” he ordered.
Her eyes had begun to clear, enough to notice the pistol he pointed back the way they’d come, his big shoulders tense as he waited for her to do as instructed while he watched her back.
She hesitated.
“Lady,” he growled out of the side of his mouth, just as they did in the movies, “get the fuck on.”
“I don’t know if—”
He stepped toward her.
“If you don’t get on that bike you’ll be dead.”
She believed him.
She got on the bike. He hopped on in front of her, tucking the pistol God-knew-where before he started the thing. Kait wrapped her arms around him automatically, feeling sinew and corded muscles that grew harder as he leaned forward and stabbed the gas.
They took off. The big engine roared down the back alley, the sound drowning out the barking dogs. Gravel slid out beneath the back tire, pinging the rear doors of other businesses. Kait ducked, her back muscles tensing as she waited for those . . . those things to be shot at her and to penetrate her skin.
He was dead. That man back there was dead. She’d seen the blood oozing out from beneath his back.
And the man in front of her had done it.
Suddenly, she wanted to hop off, but they were taking a corner, the big bike leaning toward a wedge of shrubs that framed the alley. Her reddish brown hair, pulled back in its customary ponytail, began to whip at her cheeks as they roared onto the main road, the smell of desert sage, unusually strong in the winter, doing nothing to mask the scent of tangy man in front of her.
“Take off your lab coat,” he yelled back at her.
And any thoughts of escape died a swift death as they picked up speed. At this rate, she’d break her neck if she jumped off. Besides, where would she go? Reno, Nevada, didn’t exactly have a lot of terrain where she could hide. The rock-covered hills behind her practice would give him and the bad guys an easy time of finding her.
“What?” she called back at him.
“Take off your lab coat.”
Her lab coat. Why the heck did he want her to—?
“They’ll be looking for a motorcycle with a white-coated female on the back. Take it off.”
Oh, yeah . . . well. That made sense. She unbuttoned the coat, screaming, “Who are you?” as she peeled the thing from her shoulders, the sleeves hitting her in the face as warm wind caught it, took it, and flung it high in the air.
“Name’s Chance. Chance Owens. Here’s a helmet. Strap it on.”
Chance Owens. Who was Chance Owens? And why had he come to her rescue?
But then she couldn’t think because she was fumbling with her helmet straps, wondering how he’d managed to quickly pull his own on and then strap it down with one hand. Her own helmet was too big, but she didn’t care. It’d protect her head from bullets.
Or . . . other things.
They slowed only to take a corner, still at breakneck speed, Kait’s body sliding toward his, her thighs clenching tighter. If they kept this up, she wouldn’t need to do her Thigh Master for weeks. They took off again, and Kait had a brief moment of clarity, one followed by the thought that the bad guys could likely find them just by sound, and then they were turning yet another corner, the brown horizon dipping and falling. She clutched him, her stomach clenching so hard she thought she might be sick.
Dear God, don’t let me die.
She had animals to take care of. A parrot to feed back home. A life to live.
It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth turn that she thought to look around. They were still in a commercial area, storefronts and the occasional supermarket whizzing past. Wind pressed against her eyes, making them tear and whipping reddish strands against her face. But a quick glance back revealed nothing but the stunned faces of drivers as they shot past in a burst of speed and noise.
“Hang on,” he called out.
The back wheel locked up. Kait bit back a scream as they skidded to a halt, then tipped sideways, the man turning into a crowded parking lot. A Ralphs supermarket.
“What are you doing?”
“Camouflage,” he called back.
“We’re going to camouflage ourselves? With what? Ralphs brand toilet paper?”
“No,” he shot back, racing past a startled mother who jerked on the hand of her child. Chance Owens didn’t give them a second glance, just guided his bike past her and the child, then turned in front of the store before making yet another turn toward the back. They passed a less crowded parking area, went down a narrow access road, and then turned again, Chance heading toward a loading ramp. A short cement wall grew taller and taller, the big bike echoing around them as he came to a stop at the base of the six-foot-deep dock.
“Get off,” he told her.
She glanced at the closed roll-up door, wondering if she should make a run for it.
“And take off your shirt.”
The words made her straighten. “I beg your pardon?”
“Take off your shirt,” he repeated, swinging his leg over the side of the bike. He turned to face her and took off his helmet. He said, “Don’t give me that look, Dr. Logan. If I wanted to rape you I wouldn’t have taken you to a crowded supermarket.”
“We’re not near a crowd.”
“No, but if you scream, I guarantee you someone will come running.”
“Who are you?” she said, the question just popping out of her mouth.
He crossed his big, beefy arms, the black T-shirt he wore seeming to bind around his biceps, causing them to bulge. He was handsome, if square-jawed jocks were your thing—which they weren’t.
“I told you. Chance Owens.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, the end of her ponytail brushing her ears. “Who are you?”
He darted a glance right and left. “Look,” he said. “I’ll explain later. Right now, we need to get a move on it.”
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“No,” he said quickly, sharply, black eyes as hard as the galvanized metal railing that lined the pit of the dock. “They weren’t going to kill you. Those were tasers they were using. They’re meant to knock you out.”
“Knock me out? Why the heck would someone want to knock me out? And—” Oh, Lord, she felt suddenly queasy. “You killed that man.”
“Kait,” he said softly, the look in his eyes fading to gentleness. That surprised her. Hulking men dressed in black chaps should not, as a rule, look so—so . . . nice. “Someone wants to kidnap you because they know about the migratory chip.”
Migratory chip? “Wha—I don’t—”
And then she straightened. The migratory chip. Her pet project. The one she’d been working on for years.
“How the heck does anybody know about that?”
“Two weeks ago you wrote to Senator Prescott about government funding. With that letter you set into motion a chain of events culminating in today’s attack. The agency I work with reasoned that you might attract attention from nonfriendlies. I’ve been watching your place for about a week.”
“A week?” He’d been watching her a week?
“That microchip you invented, the one that sends electronic pulses to the frontal lobes of a bird’s brain? Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to reason that if you can control the direction a bird flies, you might be able to arm that bird with cameras. Or maybe turn it into a biological weapon. The possibilities are endless. And what are foreign governments going to do? Shoot every bird out of the sky?”
“Oh, my Lord.”
“In short, Dr. Logan, you’ve created the world’s first avian weapon.”
Chapter Two
SHE DIDN’T TAKE THE NEWS WELL.
Fuck it, Chance thought. She’d needed to hear the truth. Maybe hearing the kind of trouble she was in would make her more malleable.
Except he felt sorry for her. And concerned. Crap, he couldn’t believe that when he’d picked her up
for a moment there he’d actually hugged her. And then a moment ago, when she’d asked him who he was, he’d had to cross his arms to avoid touching her face in a consoling way. What the heck was wrong with him?
“Look. I know this is a shock,” he said, tempted to cross his arms again because he couldn’t seem to stop the urge to touch her. “But we really need to get moving. The longer we’re out here, the more time they have to get a bird up in the air. And motorcycles are about as easy to spot from the air as white cars. In other words, we need to move.”
“I—”
Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He felt that strange softening sensation again. Maybe he was coming down with something.
“Shouldn’t I go to the police?” she asked.
“Negative,” he said. “All they’ll do is send an officer to check out your story.”
“And they’d find a dead body. One that you shot.” She looked him square in the eyes, a hint of accusation glittering in her blue ones. Good. That was the spirit. Fight, Kaitlyn, he privately told her.
“I doubt that body is still there,” he said, hating to dash her hopes but knowing his words were true. He had enough experience with these types of bastards to know they covered their tracks.
“What?” she asked, blue eyes widening. “How can a body just disappear?”
“They’ll pick it up.”
“There’ll be blood on the ground.”
“They’ll have picked that up, too.”
“Impossible.”
“Look. You want to go to be police, fine,” he said. “Go. Don’t blame me if you end up dead by the end of the day.”
“You said they don’t want to kill me.”
“They don’t, and that should scare you even more.”
And it did. He could tell. She looked exactly like someone at the top of a roller coaster—right before it skidded over the edge. Good. Maybe she’d wise up, because if she put her fate in the hands of local law enforcement—
He didn’t want to think about it.
“Who are you?” she asked again, chin flicking up.
“I’m someone who wants to keep you alive. And I promise, if you come with me, I’ll keep you alive—and deliver you to people who will keep you safe until the danger has passed.”
“Are you with the military?”
“Negative,” he said. “I’m better than military.”
It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, that was for sure. And it was equally clear that she had more questions, but then she straightened her shoulders, her head lifting in a show of bravado.
“What do you need me to do?”
Good girl, he almost said. And then came the urge to touch her again, to flick her chin up and smile at her. Except he couldn’t. God help him, he had a feeling touching her would be a very bad, bad idea.
“Strip,” he said curtly, more curtly than he’d meant.
“I beg your pardon?”
He gave her the same look he used to give to his privates, one meant to tell them without words that they needed to listen. “Get out of your clothes. We need to disguise ourselves.”
She looked like a woman who was trying to decide if running a yellow light was worth the risk. “You have clothes for me?”
“Standard biker babe attire.”
“Oh, great.”
And that almost made him smile. She held out her hand. “Give it over.”
Damn, but he liked her spirit. By this point most women he’d rescued were sobbing into their hands, or his shoulder.
He turned, opening a saddlebag on the side of his bike. Inside were a pair of chaps for her, a T-shirt, a leather jacket for him with the words BORN TO BE WILD on the back, and a red bandana—hers or his—he didn’t care.
“Put the chaps on,” he said. “And take your hair down. They’ll be looking for a woman in a ponytail.”
“Turn around,” she asked.
Whatever. It wasn’t like he’d take a peek, however tempting that might be.
A couple of seconds later she said, “How do I put the chaps on?”
He turned around, and Chance Owens, ex–military man and agent of Brown and Donahue, otherwise known as BAD, felt his jaw drop open.
Hole. Lee. Shit.
Dr. Larson was stacked.
She wore the shirt, the black one, the word BOOBALICIOUS scrawled across the front. Where the hell had his agency gotten that from? The shirt was small, too small. What she needed was a large. An extra-large.
“Here,” he said, clamping down on sudden unwanted and unprofessional thoughts.
Crap, Chance, you’re on a frickin’ mission. Get your mind out of the gutter.
He crossed over to her. “The zipper’s at the top, up by your thighs.”
“I can’t see it,” she said, trying to peer behind her.
“It’s right there,” he said, pointing to the leather panel with the zipper sewn into the side.
He didn’t want to touch her. Please God, don’t let me have to touch her.
“Where?” she asked again.
He bent and took a deep breath, his fingers brushing her thighs.
Okay, that wasn’t so bad.
“Match it up with the other side,” he told her, flexing his fingers.
Why was he reacting like this? Why?
He watched her connect the two ends, then start to pull the zipper down, which meant she had to turn her body. That gave him a view of her rear end, which got him thinking about how long her legs were, which made him start to think about—
Stop, he told himself. Just, stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.
When she straightened again, she had a puzzled look on her face.
“What?” she asked. “Did I do something wrong?”
No. The thought jumped into his head. You’ve done everything right.
“Nothing,” he said, turning away from her, jerking the jacket out of the saddlebag and tugging the thing on. It was seventy degrees outside. The sun was still pretty high even though it was technically early evening—dusk in the desert seemed to last forever, only to suddenly disappear in a blaze of glory. Still. He might look out of place wearing a jacket.
But suddenly he needed the damn jacket.
It would cover the woody in his pants.
She felt like Biker Barbie.
Fugitive Biker Barbie.
Loose brown hair streamed out behind her; her arms were around a guy who could easily have been first runner-up at the Mr. Olympus competition; and that man was driving her to “someplace safe.”
How had this happened?
It was a question that repeated itself through her head over and over again. It seemed odd that just a few short hours ago she’d been in her office, poring over her charts, the small practice quiet after her staff had gone home, and now suddenly—blam—here she was on the back of some bike being whisked away because of her Bird-Brained Project—as her ex used to call it.
This couldn’t be happening.
Unfortunately, it was.
Less than an hour later they pulled up to a restaurant. No, scratch that, not a restaurant—a biker bar.
“This is your safe house?” Kait asked, peering at the faded wood façade, the single-story building with the tar and gravel roof. It looked like a good wind might blow it over. A wooden sign hung in the front, one of the old-fashioned, British pub–type signs. HOG HEAVEN it announced. “This is where you propose to keep me safe from bad guys?”
He nodded. “They won’t be looking for you here. They’ll be looking for you at outlying hotels. Maybe figuring you got away with the help of a friend and that you’re lying low. The last place, and I do mean the last place, they’ll think to search for you is here.”
“So . . . what? You leave me here until the police look into matters and I can go home?”
“Affirmative. It’s not safe to be on the road right now. Who knows how many people they have canvassing the highways. By now I’m almost certain they’ll have air support. It’
s better to lie low and head out tomorrow.”
“And where, exactly, will we go then?”
“To a secure government facility.”
She slapped her forehead. “Of course. I should have figured. Is that before or after I swallow the secret microfilm?”
He looked at her as if he’d taken a swig of milk only to find out it was orange juice. “You have a better idea?”
She nodded. “I want to call the cops. I’m not comfortable with the whole ‘secret mission’ thing,” she said, making quotes in the air with her fingers. “Frankly, I’m not so certain running away is a good idea.”
A truck went by, grit rising up from the road to sandblast her face. Kait squinted. The sun had started to sink below the horizon, turning the heavens into a colorful piñata. From inside the bar she could hear the bass boom of music. And all he did was stare down at her, looking like nothing more than a black-clad Mr. Clean. With hair. Minus the earring.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. When we get inside, you can use the bar’s phone to call the police. Don’t tell them where you are, just tell them what happened and that you’re scared and hiding out somewhere and can they please send an officer to your clinic.”
“Why don’t I just use your cell phone?”
He shook his head. “No signal.”
“No signal—” But then she realized where they were, aka: off the beaten path. She weighed her options. For a moment she thought about insisting he take her to the police. But, really, when it came right down to it, there was a part of her that worried he might be right. As far-fetched as it seemed, as surreal as this might be, she couldn’t deny that men had been shooting at her with strange . . . things. She didn’t want them shooting at her again.
“Okay,” she said as a big rig rushed by. His air brakes as he slowed down were so loud that she all but jumped into Chance Owens’s arms.
He smirked. She flicked up her chin. He motioned with his hand that she should precede him, and so she did.
Kait had never been in a biker bar before, although she’d always been a little curious about them. That said, she wasn’t expecting much based on the outside. That turned out to be good because compared to the inside, the outside was the Taj Mahal.
